Nintendo promises to tackle software bottleneck

via Games Industry


Nintendo has said it is tackling a production bottleneck to ensure third-parties are able to get software on shelves in time for the busy holiday season.

Earlier this month publisher Midway said that it was struggling to get product to shelves as a result of relentless demand on Nintendo for the Wii and its software.

But Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, has stated that the issue is only short-term, and that it's working to ease the crush as publishers move to take advantage of the Wii's success.

"As every publisher talks about shifting over to Wii it's creating this crush of production right now at our factories for software," said Fils-Aime, talking at a BMO Capital Markets conference.

"What we've done is to ramp that capacity up and work with the publishers to ensure that their best titles get into the marketplace and [they] have a productive holiday. This is a very short-term situation that is effectively going to be resolved in a course of three week's time," he stated.

During the same conference, Fils-Aime said that he was not worried by suggestions that Sony and Microsoft could enter the same market as Nintendo – by developing casual titles and a relatively cheap peripheral that could copy the Wii's interface.

"The challenge that our competitors have is significant. They've gone down the path with very expensive machines where they lose money on the hardware on every unit they sell. They've gone down a path that makes it challenging for third-party developers to create content," commented Fils-Aime.

"So our competitors have put themselves in quite a box. How they get out of it is a challenge – creating casual content for those systems won't work. Not only because the ease of play won't be there but the consumer won't be there.

"I don't think a consumer paying USD 600 for a Sony system, software and accessories is the same consumer who wants to play a more casual type of product. So they have a significant strategic conundrum, and one that won't be easy to resolve," he added.